Eight Ball Out of the Back Pocket

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Mysterious shipments of billiard balls may have been showing up in Washington lately, say law-enforcement officials, and they are not for the making of The Hustler 3. Instead, anarchist groups may be stockpiling the extra balls and planning to hurl them in protest at the weekend conference of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund that begins Sept. 29. The balls are thought to be the troublemakers' weapon of choice--easy to hide, easy to throw, legal to possess and dense enough to cause damage. Rioters defiantly threw them, along with less refined bricks, rocks and Molotov cocktails, at the Summit of the Americas conference in Quebec City last April. With as many as 100,000 expected to gather for the World Bank-IMF meeting, all local and federal law-enforcement agencies are on guard. "We certainly don't want to inhibit those who come to demonstrate peaceably," says Secret Service spokesman Jim Mackin. "But we have to be prepared for those who break the law."

--Reported by Elaine Shannon